


Wild Flowers

by mintpearlvoice



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Implied/Referenced Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-14 05:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2179632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintpearlvoice/pseuds/mintpearlvoice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Theorizing about MCU!twins in the form of a V.C. Andrews pastiche.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild Flowers

From our earliest days, my brother always seemed strong and beautiful, like a glorious avenging angel who could outrun the wind. When we were young we did not know we were poor, nor that we were hated and coveted for our accidents of birth, only that we had each other and the lush grass under our feet, and the great blue sky like an upturned bowl...

"Children, pack your things. We must leave- quickly."  
"Why, Mother?" She always gave us notice before we moved on again.  
"Don't ask- just do as I say, hurry!"  
Running and hiding, hiding and running, concealed in one old, gloomy house after another. Sometimes, as our mother feared enemies, we would go days without seeing the sun.  
One incident stood out the most in my memory.

We were hiding in the attic of some old house. There, we'd found things to amuse ourselves. Prying the lock from an old trunk, we'd found a box of disused old clothes.   
My prying fingers found a red velvet shawl which I thrilled to touch. Shaking out the dust, I found that  
It was much too large for my childish frame. Still, I draped it over my shoulders and fluffed up my curls. Golly, did I feel beautiful! "Pietro, look at me," I said, skipping towards him. "I shall be Cleopatra, or Lady Olivia, or Beatrice. Won't you act with me?"  
Normally he indulged me in my theatrical longings, especially if he could pretend to tumble away from imaginary enemies. But now he seemed in the way of discontent.  
"I hate this," Pietro said, kicking at the doors of our current hiding place. "I want to go outside. I want to run."  
Similarly, I longed to feel the grass between my feet. But while my brother was often hasty, I had perfect trust in our mother. "Be patient, brother dear. Mama said she'd be back soon."  
"Do you think we could climb down?" Even as I shook my head at him, he parted the curtains of our annex window. "Look, Wanda! There are soldiers in the street, with new uniforms and great big guns!"  
Curiousity won out over fear. I crept towards him, the blanket wrapped tight around my slender soldiers, as he stuck his head out the window.  
"Pietro! No!" I pulled at his shoulders, trying to get him inside. "Mother said we musn't!"  
"I'm not afraid of anything."  
Then one of the soldiers turned and looked straight at us. Instantly I was filled with a terrible fear, especially when they began walking towards the house in which we hid.  
"Pietro, we've got to hide!"  
We crawled under a pile of old furniture. I threw my shawl over him just as we heard the sound of heavy boots clomping up the stairs. 

As they searched our attic, I pressed my forehead to his, as if by the magic charm of our togetherness we could be made invulnerable. We clung together like two survivors of a shipwrecked storm.  
It seemed ages until the intruders departed, and even after that it was a while before we could muster the courage to move. When Mother returned she found us still cradled beneath the scarlet shawl, our faces wet with each other's silent tears.  
"Oh, my children, I was so frightened for you both!"  
"Who were those men?" Pietro asked.  
"I would not dare to darken your childhood by telling you. Know only that they have been after you since your birth. When you turn eighteen, they will have no claim over you… but only then…"

We moved to a secluded little house by a lake. Mother brought back books from the village, and we read everything eagerly.

The forest became our palace. Pietro climbed from one tree branch to another as easily as any acrobat, and I made up magnificent stories about everything we saw. A clearing could become the scene of a tournament; the red of a sunset, blood spilled in war. With the red shawl that had saved our lives draped over my shoulders, I was a graceful witchy queen, and Pietro my ever-faithful knight.  
Winters froze us both to the bone; while our mother was offered lodgings in the village where she worked, she was forced to leave us behind.  
One pitifully freezing night, it seemed as if the cold would reach into my very heart and settle there and weaken me forever. Even my beloved scarlet shawl could not leech the chill from my shivering frame. With great difficulty, I sat up in bed. "Pietro, when do you think Mama will come back?"  
When he did not answer, I looked over towards him. The blankets over his chest barely rose and fell. One blanket, I realized, creeping over to him. He'd given me all the rest, and the bed closer to the fireplace besides, and draped his jacket over me as I slept-  
Hastily I dragged the blankets over to his bed and pressed my body against his.   
"Wanda?" he said, blinking open the uncannily light blue eyes that we both shared.  
"I'm here, brother," I whispered, curling into him. I'll always be here, I dared to think.  
When I pulled him closer, he began shivering; I hoped that was a good sign. "I dreamed you were gone," he whispered. "I searched for you, but I couldn't… couldn't find you. So I just… laid down in the snow and waited to die."  
"I'll stay beside you and look after you," I told him, pressing my lips to his cleanly-shaved cheek.  
He gave me a weak smile. "I feel better already."  
With each beat of our hearts I could feel the warmth seeping back into his frozen frame. It felt like magic the way my embrace restored his strength. I never wanted to let him go.

For the remainder of the winter we shared a bed. Even when spring came, we could not bring ourselves to part; my presence soothed Pietro's restlessness, and his banished my nightmares. Was this closeness between us unnatural? We neither cared nor knew, for our world consisted only of each other.

We managed to grow almost to maturity before we were found. Our eighteenth birthday.. The day we were to have been free…

"I have a surprise for you. Go to the woods while I get it ready."  
We never thought not to obey.  
"When should we come back?"  
"I'll call you both."  
She pressed kisses to both our foreheads and shooed us out.

 

We hardly visited our Romani relatives for fear of endangering them, but the days we spent with them in the mountains of Wundagore, in Transnia, were always the happiest of our lives.

"One of them owns a circus," Mother had told us. When you're eighteen, We'll be able to get across Europe,  
And he'll take you both in."

"I'll be an acrobat. I'm not afraid of heights at all," Pietro said as we walked through the woods.  
"He flies through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring young man on the flying trapeze," I sang, teasing him. "What would you wear, then- blue spangled tights?"  
"Why, I'd wear whatever allowed me to move the most easily. And what about you, my witch-queen sis? Would we be a double act?"  
"We'd make quite the pair! No, I'd be the ringmaster, and control everything with a grand sweep of my braceleted arms."  
"In your grand red velvet cloak," he replied just as playfully, and I swatted his arm.  
Over the years, I'd grown until the velvet shawl fit me perfectly. Time and time again I patched it up, and not all the patches were quite the same shade, but with my dramatic coloring, I still made quite the picture wrapped in scarlet.

 

Again we discussed our dreams.  
Goodbye, forest idyll! Goodbye to the rock on the stream where I'd draped myself in my beautiful long dark hair and pretended to be a rusalka. Goodbye to our climbing tree.  
Goodbye old life and hello new.  
"Sister, let's go for one last swim!" suggested Pietro excitedly.  
"If we went back for our clothes, we'd ruin the surprise. But I suppose no one will see us…"

When we shed our clothes, It almost startled me how beautiful we both were, the way my mosquito-bite bosoms had begun to swell into womanly curves. Pietro seemed to have grown from a skinny boy into a strong young man almost overnight; I knew it was immodest to look at him, and yet I could not tear my gaze away. Wrapped in each other's company, it was many hours before we remembered our birthday supper. Eagerly we dressed and hurried back to the house, Pietro holding me close to stop me from shivering.  
When we got to the house, a dreadful surprise awaited us. I barely recognized our dear little home, for it had been burnt all to cinders. Not a timber remained. And our mother, our dear mother, lay hurt and bleeding on the ground!

 

"Pietro- Wanda- my dear children. You must leave me. I am not your real mother. I stole you to protect you- you must hide from them-"  
"From who? Mother, tell us!"  
But she spoke no more, could speak no more.

"We've got to bury her," Pietro said, his eyes wide and glassy.  
"No, someone might come! It's too dangerous."  
"But our mother- "  
"She died for us. To keep us safe." I took his hand and pulled him into the glade.  
"Is she dead?" one soldier asked from a distance away.  
"Better make sure," another said.  
And they put a bullet in my mother's brain.  
Pietro was trembling with fear and rage. Inside I felt the same, but my only thoughts were for keeping us safe.  
"Hush," I whispered, "please don't cry, Pietro. You mustn't cry- you'll still have me, my beloved brother. You'll always have me-"  
And as the soldiers marched past our hiding place, I brought my brother to the ground and stopped his mouth up with my own...

We spent the day walking, hand in hand, hiding whenever someone came by.  
At last we came to a town; I was so tired and hungry I could have wept.

"Sleep here for the night, in this barn. I'll return with food for you."  
He placed a soft kiss on my brow. I wanted to pull him beside me, to press myself against the strange heat of his perfect warmth- but then he was gone.

The next day, it was difficult to leave the warmth of my improvised bed; I felt weak and shivery, but I cleaned myself up as best as I could and waited for Pietro's return.  
"Did you bring anything back?" I asked when I finally saw him, hope beating like a butterfly against the cage-bars of my ribs.  
A stiff shake of his head. "No one would give me anything."  
"Then we'll have to try to make it to the next town. "  
I was grateful for how he supported my weight.

As the sun moved higher in the sky, we saw an old man walking down the road. A beggar, just like us.  
"Do you have any food?" Pietro asked.  
"I've got two extra donuts. Would you like them?"  
"Yes, please," Pietro said eagerly. Only then did I realize how hungry he has been, how he'd exerted himself for my sake. We both took powdered donuts and began eating with great vigor. Halfway through Pietro turned to me, his eyes unfocused. "Wanda, my head... "  
I meant to hold him in my arms, to kiss his forehead for the telltale heat of fever as our mother had once done to us.  
But all of a sudden, I saw that the beggar man had cast aside his tattered old coat, and wore a strange uniform- the uniform of the Avengers. I tried valiantly to stay awake, to fight against the drugs, but it was all I could do to clutch onto Pietro's hand, and the sight of the our betrayer's awful sneer followed me into my dreams. 

"These powers are your inheritance. We will make you stronger, the fiercest soldiers of our new world!"  
Over and over our captors drugged us with strange compounds. We could hardly resist.  
Sometimes my limbs felt as heavy as the iron bars that perpetually encircled us. Other times it was as if I'd float right off the ground if not for my beloved Pietro's steadfast grip. Time, too, seemed malleable. Sometimes I could sing ten old Romani songs and full up no more than a minute; other times, weak from captivity, I would crawl to the other end of my cell to keep my muscles from atrophy, and glance at the clock to see that five hours had passed in the blink of an eye. The one unchanging thing was pain. My joints throbbed,  my head pounded. And my slender hands- the hands Pietro had so often kissed when we played at being the people in books- oh, they hurt the worst! as if each finger had been plunged in boiling oil!  
Frequently I begged for some ice water to rest them in, but no one ever seemed to hear.  
And if I ached, then Pietro was in agony. I could hear his teeth chattering ever so hard, like a sped-up metronome, and see his limbs jerking and trembling, his heartbeat like a jackhammer under my hand.  
"Wanda, please, make it stop hurting- or let me die..." Over and over he begged in a whisper for my help. But I could not cure his injuries as I had done so often when we were children... only hold him tightly and pray that the deity who had allowed us to be born had other plans for us than perpetual pain.

The day our aches ceased, I decided that my brother and I were destined to be instruments of revenge. We would unearth whoever had done this to us, whoever had snatched us from our childhood, and make them burn. I was no longer a child then. I was a witch.

The more evidence Pietro and I collected, the more certain we became that our tormentors were the Avengers, specifically the cruel, cold Starks. Born without powers, not content with the advancements machines could bring, they sought dominion over all. We were the test subjects for their rule of the globe.  
Two things kept me alive during our captivity: my hatred of the Avengers, and my love of my brother, my Pietro, my one scrap of happiness in this strange new world. More than ever, he was my body and I was his mind…


End file.
